Johann Elias Ridinger

Ridinger was born in Ulm in a family of artists. His father Johann Daniel (1656 – c. 1737) was a scribe married to Regina Catharina Miller (1663–1703). He began his training in Ulm with the painter Christoph Resch (1701–1716). Resch gave his students the menial tasks of painting wax models but trained them on perspective, geometry and architecture. Ridinger later studied under Johann Falch (1687–1727) in Augsburg. He learned the art of engraving from Georg Philipp Rugendas. On the recommendation of Gabriel Spitzel he worked for Wolf, Freiherr von Metternich (1706–1731), he spent three years in Regensburg: his coursing and visits to the riding school there proved decisive for his development. His engraved, etched and scratched sheets show the animals in characteristic movements and positions in a landscape environment. The ornamental movements in his works show visibly Rococo stylistic tendencies. He returned to Augsburg and studied engraving and etching under Georg Philipp Rugendas the Elder (1666–1742). Ridinger married Jacobina zur Helle, the widow of his friend Johannes Seuter in 1723 and shortly after founded his own art publishing house in Augsburg, where most of his works appeared. In 1757 he worked as an assessor at the Protestant Marriage Court and in 1759 he became the director of the Augsburg Stadtakademie. Nearly 1,600 prints were produced by his firm of which 1,200 depict animals. His drawings were often executed with precision and taste and hence his work was held in high esteem and was also transferred to decoration, porcelain and ceramics. He died from a stroke at the age of 69. His sons Martin Elias and Johann Jakob continued to produce prints from his original copperplates. Ridinger's life is known thanks to a manuscript biography written in 1764. This manuscript was owned by Rudolph Weigel (1804–1867) in Leipzig and was published in 1766. Ridinger's son also wrote a biography of their father. Georg August Wilhelm Thienemann (1781–1863) wrote another major biography.